Benjamin Clementine

Benjamin Sainte-CLémentine (born 7 December 1988) is a British composer, musician and actor.

Born and raised in London, Clementine later moved to Paris, where he experienced homelessness for a time.

In 2012, whilst playing a gig at the Festival de Cannes, he met Lionel Bensemoun, a business mogul in France, and together set up the record label 'Behind' so that Clementine could record and publish his music.

He eventually came to the attention of the French press, who described him as "la révélation anglaise des Francos" ("the English revelation of the "Francofolies" festival").

He was then invited to the Rencontres Trans Musicales of Rennes in France in December 2012 where he performed for the first time on a large stage, and played four nights consecutively.

Clementine eventually signed a joint music license contract between Capitol, Virgin EMI and Barclay.

Before Clementine signed a major deal he closely met and worked with a French tour agent with his independent label in Paris and embarked on a brief European tour playing in high-profile festivals such as the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, the Montreal Jazz Festival in Canada; and the Eurosonic Festival in the Netherlands.

As a result, the North Sea Jazz Festival in 2013 booked Clementine to play, but he failed to attend, lacking funds to purchase a train ticket and having difficulties getting to Rotterdam, eventually trying to walk the 45km barefoot.

Despite this, two years later he was offered another spot at the same festival.

Clementine's first EP, Cornerstone, was released in June 2013 with three studio tracks.

It was re-issued in October 2013 with three additional acoustic tracks recorded for Deezer, a web-based music streaming service.

In the same month, on an episode of the BBC television show Later With Jools Holland that also included performances by Paul McCartney, Earth, Wind and Fire, Gary Clark Jr.. and the Arctic Monkeys, he performed the EP's title track.

The appearance drew strong critical praise, with Paul McCartney encouraging Clementine to continue his musical career.

The London Evening Standard's David Smyth, reviewing a gig at the South Bank Centre, said that Clementine's performance reminded him of Nina Simone, particularly as he had covered her hit "Ain't Got No, I Got Life" in a radically different style.

Clementine announced further tours, both solo and supporting Cat Power at the Brighton Dome, including an appearance at the O2 Academy in Brixton and at the Rencontres Trans Musicales festival in Rennes, France, where he worked on a special show and performed four nights.

Andy Gill on the Independent album review wrote:

In 2014, during the shooting of his music video for "At Least for Now", Clementine fell on a pile of stones in Ireland, badly injuring his elbow, then later cut a toe whilst walking on stones.

"This debut EP offers a taste of one of 2014's most promising new talents. With just Benjamin Clementine's impulsive piano figures accompanying his dark, powerful voice, there's a soulful solemnity about these searching songs. But there's also a wealth of imagination at work: 'It's a wonderful life, traversed in tears from the heavens,' he observes in 'I Won't Complain', surveying the emotional turmoil that renders his heart a 'melodrama in fact'; while over flurries of piano, his urgent delivery of 'Cornerstone' blends the sensitivity of Antony Hegarty with the wracked passion of Nina Simone, admitting loneliness as his 'home, home, home', but biting off the word to sound like 'hope'. A distinctive and impressive new voice."

Clementine initially wanted to record his debut album, At Least for Now, straight after his first EP, Cornerstone, but due to contractual dealings with the music industry and his label it was strategically held back for almost two years.

During that time, he decided to write his own dictionary, as well as a collection of poetry and classical music pieces.

After moving back to London, he released his debut album At Least for Now, which won the 2015 Mercury Prize.

In March 2015, whilst performing in the middle of a concert in Paris, he cut a finger open and started to bleed, but kept on playing until an audience member threw tissues on the stage.

At Least for Now was mainly released across Europe on 12 January 2015.

On 13 February 2015 it reached the iTunes Top 10 in Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg Poland and Greece.

In England, it won the prestigious Mercury Music Prize.

At Least for Now largely received critical acclaim.

In February 2019 he was named a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government, in recognition of his contribution to the arts.

A number of critics have described him as becoming one of the great singer-songwriters of his generation, and the future sound of London, whilst struggling to place his music in any one genre.

Clementine's compositions are musically incisive and attuned to the issues of life but also poetic, mixing revolt with love and melancholy, sophisticated lyricism with slang and shouts, and rhyming verse with prose monologues.

He often performs topless and barefoot onstage, dressed entirely in black or dark grey, with a long, wool trench coat.

The youngest of five children, Benjamin Clementine grew up in Edmonton, London, with his strict Roman Catholic grandmother.

After she died, he moved in with his parents.

The family acquired a piano when Clementine was 11, and Benjamin played it when he could, but his father, who had hoped his son would study law, forbade him to spend time with musical instruments.

Clementine could not read sheet music, but in a few months, he started imitating the work of classic composers Erik Satie and Claude Debussy, learned from listening to Classic FM on the radio after "becoming bored" with pop music, and continued to play discreetly for the next five years until his parents' divorce.

Clementine left school at 16, following which he had a dispute with his family and ended up in Camden Town, London, homeless and in psychological and financial difficulties.

He relocated to Paris at age 19, where he spent a number of years busking and playing in bars and hotels in Place de Clichy while sleeping on the streets.

He eventually moved to a hostel in Montmartre, where he paid €20 to live in a ten-man bunk-bed room.

For the next three years he wrote and composed songs, and playing a half-broken guitar and a cheap keyboard he had acquired.

During this period he developed into a cult figure in the Parisian music scene.

After four years of living as a vagabond, he was discovered by an agent, who later introduced him to Matthieu Gazier, who would go on to become Clementine's manager for a period of time.